Fowls – food and water
Nutritional information for fowls.
Water
Fowls must have access to adequate and appropriate water for their age, stage of production and weather conditions.
A clean, adequate supply of water, placed in a cool shaded area in hot weather, is required. If automatic nipple drinkers are used, they should always be fitted with a failsafe mechanism.
Variations in consumption range from a few millilitres for chickens to 500 ml per day in summer for adults. Water needs to be cleaned out regularly and can be slightly raised to prevent fowls walking through it. When supplying water for very young chickens, care must be taken to ensure the water is very shallow so that there is no risk of drowning.
A covered water trough, which automatically refills, mounted outside on the shed wall is recommended to avoid wetting the litter. The trough should be 200 mm above floor level and should be long enough to allow each bird in the flock to drink at the one time (10 cm per bird and if less, two or more drinkers are needed). There are a variety of automatic waterers available from poultry equipment suppliers.
If water for poultry is pumped directly from dams, without being treated, there is an increased risk of avian influenza being transmitted to the domestic poultry, from wild ducks. Therefore it is recommended that town or tank water should be used for poultry and water lines should be regularly flushed and cleaned to prevent a build up of slime.
NSW biosecurity for free range poultry farms
Water medications should be introduced gradually and closely monitored to ensure correct dosage and consumption of adequate water quantity.
Feed
Fowls must have access to adequate and appropriate feed for their age, stage of production and weather conditions.
Quantity and quality of feed should be based on:
- Age
- Extra demands based on growth and egg laying.
- Prevailing/predicted weather conditions.
Regular assessment should be made of the needs of the birds in relation to the quantity and quality of feed. This can be done by weighing birds and performing visual assessment of their condition. Gentle palpitation of the breast area gives a good indication of the condition of a chicken.
Poultry are naturally foraging animals and so for optimum digestion should be provided with a variety of feed and vegetation. While they can be fed entirely on purpose made concentrate like pellets, fowls gain both physical and behavioural enrichment from having access to vegetation such as grass, seeds, grubs and insects, in addition to their daily ration of concentrate.
Crumbles and mash should be used for young chicks and grit is important to enable healthy gut function in birds as it aids in their ability to break down food. Grit and feed high in calcium is important for layers if they are to produce quality eggs with strong eggshells and ensure they do not become calcium deficient themselves.
Adult hens and roosters require 150-200g of pellets per day and these should be fed ad lib. Commercially prepared food is preferred as it ensures all nutritional needs are met. Other feed types like grains and green forages should only be fed in addition, not as a replacement. Layer hens should not be fed coccidiostats if their eggs are to be used for human consumption.
Regular monitoring should be carried out to ensure all birds are gaining access to the feed and that hens that are lower in the pecking order are not being denied access to the feed.
Chickens being grown for egg production need chicken starter crumbles or mash from day 1 to about six weeks. The diet should contain 18%–20% crude protein and a coccidiostat, to prevent the disease coccidiosis.
From 6-18 weeks of age, growers’ pellets or crumbles with 15%-16% protein can be used. Food and water should be supplied to chickens ab-lib and at 18 weeks the pullets should be fed a laying diet, which should be available constantly. Pellets can also be supplemented with scratch grain and kitchen scraps, but kitchen scraps must never be relied upon solely as the diet.
Broiler chickens should be fed starter crumble for the first two weeks with 22% protein. From two to four weeks of age, crumble with 22% protein is suitable and from four weeks of age until market weight, crumble with 18% protein is suitable. The crumble provided up to the age of four weeks should contain a coccidiostat to prevent the disease coccidiosis.
Additional food and water information
Poultry – food and water
Watch Poultry – food and water. (1:07)
Narrator: Tony Butler – agriculture teacher
The next important aspect of their development is the food and water. In terms of the water, we need to make sure that they are adequately watered over that period of eight weeks.
In the early stage we can provide small containers to give these birds their water so they can actually adequately access that water. After about two or three weeks we can remove those containers and then use an automotive system. That system is adequate in terms of their further development for the period of the eight weeks.
Moving onto the next part of their regime is their feed. Their feed is important because they need to start off at a high protein percentage. That percentage is twenty one per cent, it’s referred to as broiler starter and that’s significant for their early part of muscle and growth development.
Once the chickens reach to five weeks of age, we then change that diet onto a lower protein of about eighteen per cent. That particular feed regime is then referred to as a broiler finisher.
By the time the birds finish their program at eight weeks, we then have a bird that’s highly muscled, the fat levels are quite minimal and obviously acceptable for the consumer.
[End of transcript]
Feeding and watering chickens properly
Watch Feeding and watering chicken properly. (5:21)
(bright upbeat music)
Dr Tim Walker
The main poultry for schools will be meat chicken, commonly known as broilers, which are grown for their meat production and laying hens for egg production. Different classes of poultry need different feeds or have different nutrient requirements and generally, growing birds need more protein and as they grow they need a lower amount of protein than when they are very young chickens.
Laying hens are quite different to growing birds because of their calcium requirement so a major difference between a laying hen and a growing bird diet is the calcium content. Calcium and phosphorus generally come from limestone or oyster shell (calcium carbonate).
If hens start producing eggs with very thin or soft shells that would be an indication of calcium deficiency, and very quickly, they need to have added calcium given to them.
Typically, if the hen is calcium deficient, she will lay a few eggs with thin and then no shell and then stop laying completely. For good poultry production we need a balance of all of the nutrients required by poultry.
Poultry feeds are formulated into what we call formulas which are calculated to provide all of the nutrients needed by poultry, for their particular stage of production. And these formulated diets will contain all of the essential nutrients which we know poultry need at certain levels and will consist mainly of grain, such as wheat or sorghum, which are the main grains in Australia, but could include corn or barley or triticale, and protein meals to balance the protein which is already present in the grain.
Commercially, for a broiler grown to 6 or 7 weeks of age, there may be 3 or 4 different stages of feed with progressively lower protein levels, from starter, through grower, finisher and withdrawal feed. It’s important for the health and welfare and production of poultry that the feed given is nutritionally adequate and this can be assured by feeding a commercial, formulated feed.
But, in the school situation this can be supplemented without great risk by other materials such as canteen scraps or material from school gardens. Feeding of scratch grain in the school situation is acceptable and probably desirable.
Chicken digestive function requires large particles in the diet or particles which can be eaten from the area where they are living. By feeding scratch grain, the birds will also be more active.
One benefit for laying hens of green feed, like green grass, is the supply of natural pigment, the yellow and red pigments which give eggs their yellow to golden colour.
Commercial broiler feeds are normally pelleted by a process known as steam pelleting.
For the young bird, if the pellet is too large, the pellet is put through a cracking process called crumbling, so typically, a broiler starter feed would be crumbled, followed by pelleted grower, finisher and withdrawal feed.
Water is a very important and often overlooked nutrient for poultry.
Poultry must have water available at all times and that water needs to be clean, and particularly in hot weather, cool.
Poultry will drink approximately twice the weight of water of their feed consumption which means about 200 ml per day for a laying hen eating 100 g of feed.
As the temperature increases above comfortable temperatures, water consumption will increase greatly so provision of plenty of water, cool water, in summer, is very, very important. There are a number of ways of providing water to poultry.
In a school situation, if it can be some automated failsafe system that will be much more acceptable than a system that requires, on regular cleaning and refilling which can potentially mean water is not available on weekends for example.
So I would urge you to invest in some automated system which may have a header tank, some piping and nipples or cups to provide water to the poultry.
[End of transcript]